Ken Stone and Neturei Karta on Jerusalem, Canada, Zionism

(March 29)

A day before the Global March to Jerusalem (GMJ), we hold a press conference, to reiterate the reasons for such a march.

Several of the internationals present spoke, including Sui, a slight and humble Japanese participant who while passionate for justice is the farthest from a security threat one can get. Yet he is one of the Marchers demonized in advance by the Zionist media.

Ken Stone, a Canadian from Hamilton, Ontario, spoke in detail both about the imperative to stop the Zionists’ criminal activities in occupied Jerusalem and about the blind and criminal allegiance of the Canadian government to Israel:

“You would not know it from the governments or the media of Canada and the United States of America that there are millions of people in North America of good conscience who wholeheartedly support the Palestinian cause, people of every national origin, every religion, and of many political perspectives. Many of these people endorse the aims of the Global March to Jerusalem:

to stop the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Jerusalem;

to secure unrestricted access to non-Jewish places of worship in Jerusalem and protect these sites from “excavations” and other threats;

to affirm the rights of the Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and farms in Palestine soon;

to end the brutal and illegal occupation of Palestine by the criminal regime in Al Quds;

to make Jerusalem the capital of a Palestinian state.

Both the governments of the United States and Canada enable the government of the State of Israel to commit the many heinous and illegal crimes of aggression, ethnic cleansing, and dispossession of the Palestinian people. For example, the government of the USA donates some 3 billion dollars in subsidies to the Zionist state every single year plus the latest weapons, technology, and intelligence, which the regime in Al Quds uses to oppress the Palestinian people with extra-legal assassinations, drone attacks, Apartheid Walls, home demolitions, evictions, racist laws, restrictions on water, electricity, demolition of Palestinian infrastructure, and a host of other apartheid measures that are too long to list. Despite his many promises to the contrary, President Obama has given the green light to the criminal regime in Al Quds to build a never-ending number of illegal settlements in the West Bank and to unleash terrorist attacks on the unarmed civilians of Gaza. In fact, it is only with the support of the US government that the Zionist government in Jerusalem can maintain the illegal blockade of Gaza, which is a violation of the 4th Geneva Convention on the rights of peoples under occupation, and is causing a humanitarian catastrophe in that place, which is now the world’s largest concentration camp. Furthermore, President Obama has turned a blind eye to the ethnic cleaning of Jerusalem. Finally, without US help, the regime in Al Quds could not resist the worldwide call for a nuclear-weapons-free Middle East and is instead planning to attack other countries in the region to maintain its nuclear advantage.

The Canadian government is also an enabler of the Zionist regime. After the Palestinian general elections of 2006, the Canadian government, under Stephen Harper stopped sending aid to Gaza and to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency. This aid was previously distributed to Palestinian refugees. Now they get no help from the Canadian government. In fact, the Hamas government in Gaza has been added to Canada’s list of terrorist organizations. This is shameful!

In addition, the Canadian government has hosted and feted the war criminal, Benjamin Netanyahu, on several occasions, including at the time his government launched its murderous Cast Lead attack on Gaza in 2008. The Canadian government has also signed the Canada-Israel Security Cooperation Agreement to share intelligence with the Mossad and other nefarious Zionist governmental organizations. In many statements, the Harper government has shown its completely one-sided support for the State of Israel even to the point of declaring that “an attack on Israel is an attack on Canada.” Canadian cabinet ministers openly boast that Canada is the best friend of the Zionist state in the whole world.

This enabling of the Zionist regime by the Canadian government is shameful and must stop!

We, in the Global March to Jerusalem – North America, wish to assure you that these war-like positions taken by the governments of North America do not represent the general views of the people of both Canada and the United States of America. Its views represent the top one percent of the population. Our views represent the views of many among the other 99 percent.”

Near the end of the Press Conference, one of the Orthodox Jews from Neturei Karta spoke:

What has happened in Palestine, by oppressing an entire people, and while we all know what happened for decades and recently with Gaza, …this is a violation of Judaism and Jewish teachings.

People today believe that Jews are in danger from the Arab population. That Arabs hate us and they just want to drive us into the sea. Even if that was true, why should this legitimize oppressing other people? But this happens to be totally wrong. Jews lived in Al Quds, Jerusalem, in Palestine, and in other Muslim countries for centuries, without any problems. Jews lived in Muslim countries far better than in other countries. We practised our religion, we had a difference of religion, and we were still respected and had our freedoms.

When was this changed, and why was this peaceful co-existence destroyed? This was from the very beginning of Zionism, even before 1948 when the Zionist philosophy came into Palestine to oppress a people in order to gain power over others. At that time the mistrust between the people rose, the bloodshed, and the casualties on all sides which are unfortunately continuing to the present day.

Jews live today in the Islamic Republic of Iran and they exercise their freedom of religion. We had a delegation just 4 weeks ago visit the Islamic Republic of Iran—not the first time—they visited the Jewish communities and they visited the Jewish classes they have for youths.

There are Jews today visiting Lebanon…and they are still alive! Why? It’s the second time I’m in Lebanon. We are protected by the people of Lebanon. We don’t need a state of “Israel” to save us. We don’t need a state of “Israel” to endanger us. We need the co-existence that did exist before all of this. We need to get back history that is forgotten on purpose, is purposely being eradicated. It’s being eradicated from education, which is a disaster not only for the freedom of education, but a disaster for us.

International Journalism Award From Mexican Press Club March 2017

about me

Eva Bartlett is an independent writer and rights activist with extensive experience in Syria and in the Gaza Strip, where she lived a cumulative three years (from late 2008 to early 2013). She documented the 2008/9 and 2012 Israeli war crimes and attacks on Gaza while riding in ambulances and reporting from hospitals.
Since April 2014, she has visited Syria 7 times, including two months in summer 2016 and one month in Oct/Nov 2016 and her latest visit in June 2017 (to Aleppo, Homs, al-Waer, Madaya, al-Tall, Damascus).
Her early visits included interviewing residents of the Old City of Homs, which had just been secured from militants, and visiting historic Maaloula after the Aramaic village had been liberated of militants. In December 2015, Eva returned to old Homs to find life returning, small shops opened, some of the damaged historic churches holding worship anew, and citizens preparing to celebrate Christmas once again.
On her 5th visit in June-August 2016, she went twice to Aleppo, also visiting Palmyra, Masyaf, Jableh, Tartous, and Barzeh district of Damascus, as well as returning again to Maaloula and Latakia.
On her sixth visit to Syria, in October and November, she visited Aleppo twice more, as well as areas around Damascus. The testimonies Eva gathered in Aleppo starkly contrasted narratives corporate media had been asserting.
Many of her published Syria writings, videos, photos can be found at this link:
https://ingaza.wordpress.com/syria/